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How Cyber Week Fraud Has Changed

Payments
Fraud prevention innovation
Accertify
Sep 18, 2026
Whitepapers

Accertify analyzed 576 million Retail and Retail Marketplace transactions, representing $73.1 billion in value and 3.0 million attempted-fraud transactions, across five Cyber Week seasons from 2021 through 2025.

The report covers three key trends:

  • Cyber Week keeps starting earlier: Pre-Thanksgiving volume is up 61–66% since 2021, compared with 37–39% for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
  • Attempted fraud targets larger carts: Fraud attempts run 1.9x to 2.3x the average legitimate transaction, reaching a five-year high of 2.33x in 2025 as everyday baskets shrank to $115.
  • Fraud concentrates overnight: The 11 PM to 3 AM CST window carries just 7.97% of transactions but 14.04% of attempted fraud.

Fraud and payments teams can use the report's hourly risk curves and day-level growth data to pressure-test whether their readiness window and review thresholds match where risk actually sits.

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